The influence of Greek and Roman authors on our American forefathers finally becomes clear in this fascinating book—the first comprehensive study of the founders’ classical reading.

This engaging yet deeply informed work not only examines Roman history and the multitude of Roman achievements in rich and colorful detail but also delineates their crucial and lasting impact on Western civilization. Noted historian Carl J. Richard argues that although we Westerners are "all Greeks" in politics, science, philosophy, and literature and "all Hebrews" in morality and spirituality, it was the Romans who made us Greeks and Hebrews. As the author convincingly shows, from the Middle Ages on, most Westerners received Greek ideas from Roman sources. Similarly, when the Western world adopted the ethical monotheism of the Hebrews, it did so at the instigation of a Roman citizen named Paul, who took advantage of the peace, unity, stability, and roads of the empire to proselytize the previously pagan Gentiles, who quickly became a majority of the religion's adherents. Although the Roman government of the first century crucified Christ and persecuted Christians, Rome's fourth- and fifth-century leaders encouraged the spread of Christianity throughout the Western world. In addition to making original contributions to administration, law, engineering, and architecture, the Romans modified and often improved the ideas they assimilated. Without the Roman sense of social responsibility to temper the individualism of Hellenistic Greece, classical culture might have perished, and without the Roman masses to proselytize and the social and material conditions necessary to this evangelism, Christianity itself might not have survived.

New York Times Bestseller Editors' Choice —New York Times Book Review "Ricks knocks it out of the park with this jewel of a book. On every page I learned something new. Read it every night if you want to restore your faith in our country." —James Mattis, General, U.S. Marines (ret.) & 26th Secretary of Defense The Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and #1 New York Times bestselling author offers a revelatory new book about the founding fathers, examining their educations and, in particular, their devotion to the ancient Greek and Roman classics—and how that influence would shape their ideals and the new American nation. On the morning after the 2016 presidential election, Thomas Ricks awoke with a few questions on his mind: What kind of nation did we now have? Is it what was designed or intended by the nation’s founders? Trying to get as close to the source as he could, Ricks decided to go back and read the philosophy and literature that shaped the founders’ thinking, and the letters they wrote to each other debating these crucial works—among them the Iliad, Plutarch’s Lives, and the works of Xenophon, Epicurus, Aristotle, Cato, and Cicero. For though much attention has been paid the influence of English political philosophers, like John Locke, closer to their own era, the founders were far more immersed in the literature of the ancient world. The first four American presidents came to their classical knowledge differently. Washington absorbed it mainly from the elite culture of his day; Adams from the laws and rhetoric of Rome; Jefferson immersed himself in classical philosophy, especially Epicureanism; and Madison, both a groundbreaking researcher and a deft politician, spent years studying the ancient world like a political scientist. Each of their experiences, and distinctive learning, played an essential role in the formation of the United States. In examining how and what they studied, looking at them in the unusual light of the classical world, Ricks is able to draw arresting and fresh portraits of men we thought we knew. First Principles follows these four members of the Revolutionary generation from their youths to their adult lives, as they grappled with questions of independence, and forming and keeping a new nation. In doing so, Ricks interprets not only the effect of the ancient world on each man, and how that shaped our constitution and government, but offers startling new insights into these legendary leaders.

In Twelve Greeks and Romans Who Changed the World, Carl J. Richard brings to life a group of men whose contributions fundamentally altered western society. In this compelling narrative, readers encounter a rich cast of characters, including eloquent Homer, shrewd Pericles, fiery Alexander, idealistic Plato, ambitious Caesar, dedicated Paul, and passionate Augustine. As he vibrantly describes the contributions of the individuals, Richard details the historical context in which each lived, showing how these men influenced their world and ours.

In a masterful study Carl Richard explores how the Greek and Roman classics became enshrined in American antebellum culture. For the first time, knowledge of the classics extended beyond aristocratic males to the middle class, women, African Americans, and frontier settlers. The Civil War led to a radical alteration of the educational system in a way that steadily eroded the preeminence of the classics.

Is our Greek and Roman heritage merely allusive and illusory? Or were our founders, and so our republican beginnings, truly steeped in the stuff of antiquity? So far largely a matter of generalization and speculation, the influence of Greek and Roman authors on our American forefathers finally becomes clear in this fascinating book-the first comprehensive study of the founders' classical reading.Carl J. Richard begins by examining how eighteenth-century social institutions in general and the educational system in particular conditioned the founders to venerate the classics. He then explores the founders' various uses of classical symbolism, models, "antimodels," mixed government theory, pastoralism, and philosophy, revealing in detail the formative influence exerted by the classics, both directly and through the mediation of Whig and American perspectives. In this analysis, we see how the classics not only supplied the principal basis for the U.S. Constitution but also contributed to the founders' conception of human nature, their understanding of virtue, and their sense of identity and purpose within a grand universal scheme. At the same time, we learn how the classics inspired obsessive fear of conspiracies against liberty, which poisoned relations between Federalists and Republicans.The shrewd ancients who molded Western civilization still have much to teach us, Richard suggests. His account of the critical role they played in shaping our nation and our lives provides a valuable lesson in the transcendent power of the classics.

Founders, classics, and canons have been vitally important in helping to frame sociology's identity. Within the academy today, a number of positions?feminist, postmodernist, postcolonial?question the status of "tradition."In Founders, Classics, Canons, Peter Baehr defends the continuing importance of sociology's classics and traditions in a university education. Baehr offers arguments against interpreting, defending, and attacking sociology's great texts and authors in terms of founders and canons. He demonstrates why, in logical and historical terms, discourses and traditions cannot actually be "founded" and why the term "founder" has little explanatory content. Equally, he takes issue with the notion of "canon" and argues that the analogy between the theological canon and sociological classic texts, though seductive, is mistaken.Although he questions the uses to which the concepts of founder, classic, and canon have been put, Baehr is not dismissive. On the contrary, he seeks to understand the value and meaning these concepts have for the people who employ them in the cultural battle to affirm or attack the liberal university tradition.

The religious beliefs of America’s founding fathers have been a popular and contentious subject for recent generations of American readers. In The Founders and the Bible, historian Carl J. Richard carefully examines the framers’ relationship with the Bible to assess the conflicting claims of those who argue that they were Christians founding a Christian nation against those who see them as Deists or modern secularists. Richard argues that it is impossible to understand the Founders without understanding the Biblically infused society that produced them. They were steeped in a biblical culture that pervaded their schools, homes, churches, and society. To show the fundamental role of religious beliefs during the Founding and early years of the republic, Richard carefully reconstructs the beliefs of 30 Founders; their lifelong engagements with Scripture; their biblically-infused political rhetoric; their powerful beliefs in a divine Providence that protected them and guided the young nation; their beliefs in the superiority of Christian ethics and in the necessity of religion to republican government; their beliefs in spiritual equality, free will, and the afterlife; their religious differences; the influence of their biblical conception of human nature on their formulation of state and federal constitutions; and their use of biblical precedent to advance religious freedom.

This lively and engaging book is the only popular work to explore the profound impact of Ancient Greece and Rome on the Founding Fathers. The classical education they imbibed as young students inspired them to undertake the American Revolution and influenced their approach to a host of constitutional and practical issues crucial to the shaping of the new American republic. Recounting the stirring stories the founders encountered in their favorite histories of Greece and Rome, renowned scholar Carl J. Richard explores what they learned from these vivid tales and how they applied these lessons to their own heroic quest to win American independence and establish a durable republic. Richard explains how the founders learned the importance of individual rights from the absence of those rights in Sparta, the superiority of republican government to monarchy from the Greek victory over the Persians, the perils of democracy from the instability of Athens, the need for a strong central government from the fall of Greece to Macedon and Rome, the importance of virtue to the success of a republic from early Rome, the need for eternal vigilance against ambitious individuals from the fall of the Roman republic, and the preciousness of liberty from its destruction by the Roman emperors. Crucial to the decisions that shaped the United States, these lessons remain invaluable today for every citizen concerned with America's future course.

This controversial, convincing, and highly original book is important reading for everyone concerned about the origins, present, and future of the American experiment in self-government.